Nobody is allowed to choose not to work. Fed up of hearing this expression.

[girlfriend44]

I keep hearing people say people who choose not to work. Target them.
Nobody is allowed to choose not to work. I wonder if some people actually know what they are talking about?

Nobody is allowed to just lounge around and not look for work.

Able bodied people on UC who don't have a paid job are harassed all the time.
They will probably be attending interviews at the jobcentre once a week, where they have to provide evidence they are jobsearching 35 hours a week.

They can be sanctioned over any little thing.
They have to attend any courses they are sent on, even if they are useless courses. Non attendance will end in a sanction.

The staff can arrange interviews on their behalf if the employer has a tie up with the jobcentre which some do.
If it's deemed you didn't try hard enough at the interview, the employer can discuss this with the staff,and you'll be hauled up and sanctioned for not trying.

Those who think people choose not to work please be educated.
It's a hostile environment for anyone out of work.
Not every able bodied person can find employment.
Your not just allowed to sit at home and choose not to work though.

You'll have a claimant commitment and you have to provide evidence of jobsearching. 35 hours too.

I think alot of people who comment don't really know. Everyone is under pressure.
The days of just signing on once a fortnight and not having to.prove your doing everything you can have long gone.

There’s no job you’re ’wildly overqualified’ for when you’re unemployed. I had a masters degree and worked in McDonald’s while looking for a job in my field. Didn’t think of claiming benefits. An honest day’s work is never shameful.

But they aren’t contributing to society by paying tax either, their partner/husband is. I know of three families where the high earning partner “employs” their wife so that they can reduce the amount of tax they owe, and access free nursery funded hours. But this type of playing the system is fine and giggled about at baby groups.

Genuinely? I have to admit I just apply to jobs and send in my CV. They call me back and I go for interview. What questionnaires are there? Why does interview prep take a couple of hours for each job? Surely once you have done quite a few, you are pretty interview ready apart from specifics of the company you are going to. I’m not saying it doesn’t take time looking for work but 35 hours a week seems excessive if you have to prove you have spent every single hour looking for work.

Of course it’s possible to choose not to work. I personally know people in my family and friendship periphery who choose precisely that and live on whatever benefits they can wangle.

Equally it’s perfectly possible to claim to be disabled in order to claim PIP to get the job centre off your back. Someone I know claims Pip for anxiety and fibromyalgia, claims to be crippled with the pain and yet works every day as a cleaner cash in hand. She openly brags about the Oscar winning performance she gave at her PIP interview (10 minutes on the phone apparently).

Why are some posters so adamant that benefit fraud doesnt exist and that some people are just lazy and workshy and happy to get one over others.

Fortunately most people are not like that.

I have family like this as well.

You've definitely got a point about the wage stagnation. My Grandad (in his late 80s) always talks about 'you had to go out to work or you didn't eat'. But he managed to keep a family of 5, with a mortgage and a car on a single postman's salary in the SE. My grandmother didn't work so didn't need childcare. They weren't well off my any means, but they were comfortable, didn't struggle to put food on the table or clothes on the kids backs.
I don't live in the SE now but I imagine even with two NMW jobs you'd struggle to live very comfortably, let alone buy a house.
So yeah I can see why people take the piss, if you're not gonna be well off either way, and your options are slave 40hrs in care job or a shop, or not work at all...

There clearly should be family-based taxation so that this isn't necessary. I really don't care at all how a husband and wife choose to split their joint income and the state shouldn't try to tilt it one way or the other with taxes. But aside from the legal tax minimisation they are doing (is it illegal to hire employees who aren't very productive?) they aren't trying to spend my money, so I can't get worked up about this.

I don't make a distinction between "she isn't contributing anything, her husband is" - they're a family unit. Their family is contributing.

I'm more than happy to fund a safety net, in fact would prefer to fund an even more generous one (for a much more limited group). But since it's my taxes paying for it, yes I have an opinion on who is really deserving.

What do you mean by 'nobody is allowed to choose not to work'?

I know many, older admittedly, but able and capable people who could be earning a higher tax rate salary+ who have earned enough for their needs, and now choose not to work, and are not claiming state pension or any government benefits..
Get those people back in employment and they'll be earning the government far more in taxes than the government will gain by tinkering with PIP/disability benefits claimants.

They absolutely can choose not to work if on uc.
If you are on uc and have a partner as long as the partner is working and earning the couples threshold. Currently £1437 the other partner is not required to work.

I know of plenty of people moved over from tax credits who are part of a couple with school age kids, no disabilities where only one of them is working. The sahp is actively choosing not to work. Universal credit allow this.

I am surprised this wasn't mentioned in the reforms yesterday.

A single parent will be asked to look for work whereas if you're a couple as long as one is working they do not require you to look for work

@ColdwarEra I don't think this is the point you wanted to make, but I actually have a relative who disagrees with me about the benefits system. He employs mostly manual labouring staff.

He basically sees the benefits system as something that means he doesn't have to work with the lazy bottom-5% work ethic people who would otherwise sign on with him and do the bare minimum with bad attitude (and maybe steal, break things, abuse people...)

Not sure how that fits into anyone's worldview on this thread, but it's a perspective!

What I’m reading from you reply is that middle class fiddling of the system is okay but lower class reliance on the system isn’t. Your prejudice is really blinding you. Actively avoiding tax and accessing thousands of pounds worth of childcare - tax funded childcare - they could and should be paying for is fine in your eyes because her husband pays some tax?

Oh and thank you for your huge generosity! I didn’t realise you were funding all single mothers across the country!

It’s true though.

SOME people choose not to work and live on benefits.

SOME people think that certain work is beneath them and live on benefits.

Everybody can choose not to work.

The problem is entitled people who expect the government to fund it. Bring back personal responsibility.

So she lies.
I know a couple of cases like this.

I feel there is a lack of proper support at the jobcentre. At your appointment they can be quite harsh and interrogating, with very little support. You leave just feeling very much on your own and feeling like crap. Some people are out of work for genuine reasons and with their own difficulties, it would be great to have a work coach that would genuinely help.
I have a Uni degree and before certain family circumstances changed , i was working full time in a career i loved. I can no longer do this due to the times required and current situation i have found myself in. I had family support at the time which I no longer do. Child having difficulties etc
I've been sent for interviews over an hour away which I have completely no skills in that is required for the job , but you have to attend or you get sanctioned.
I find if staff at the jobcentre actually supported people on their individual needs and really helped them out in the journey to getting back into work it would greatly help. instead of treating everyone the same , making sure they follow the rules and boxes are ticked , looking down on people. A lot of them are not doing their jobs properly, sitting at their desks thinking so highly of themselves

That’s not what's being discussed though!

But OPs isn't talking about actual disabled people, or people too Ill to work. She's saying there aren't people who 'choose not to work', ie, play the system when they're perfectly capable of work. Which is patently unture - I know several who are quite open about it.

this isn't what they say to the job center though. This is exactly what my brother in law does. He is happy staying home, smoking week, partying with his friends. He attends his meetings every week and has a whole host of excuses, he wont learn to drive because he doesn't want to work (His parents offered to pay for him to learn and to buy him a car to get him started and so his life is easier) so its easy for him to say oh i cant do any job where i need to rely on public transport because he lives rural and transport isnt reliable. So he can avoid those jobs, no jobs which require any kind of driving, he claims to have anxiety talking to the public (he doesnt, he likes to joke that that keeps the questions at bay for a while) so rules out another large chunk of jobs. And if there are any jobs which fall into the narrow window of what he will apply for he usually will deliberately "misread" the job description so he isnt accepted for interview. If he does get to interview he usually arrives a little late. He has it down like a fine art. he and his friends have done this for the past 10 years. He has never not claimed. I cannot imagine they are the only ones out there doing it.

Agreed

The difference is a household being a net contributor or a net loss by choice. That’s why it’s different.

If you want to be pedantic, let’s phrase it as ‘choosing not to work is a luxury’. If you can afford to fund that luxury through savings, passive income or whatever, good for you. If you can’t, it shouldn’t be a choice you can make. You wouldn’t expect the government to buy you a Ferrari, so it’s the same principle.

Given the choice, employers will always prefer workers who actually do the tasks asked of them, without stealing, breaking things, or abusing other staff/customers - well, yes?

I'm generally really angry at people who play the benefits system while I have to save and save and save to be able to afford my 2-bed ex-council property for £3k a month, but this is the one argument I've found really compelling. I don't know what you do with this group of people* if not just pay them to stay away from other people. I suppose we could bring back arrests for vagrancy

*The group I mentioned, not everyone on benefits

I also think this debate has the potential to slide into SAHM bashing. Lots of people decide as a family that they can manage on one wage, or that two parents working part time works for them. If they can do that without relying on the state for top-ups then that is a perfectly reasonable decision. Not everyone HAS to work 35-40 hours a week if they can afford not to.

Here we are talking about people who are capable of some sort of work and are financing not working through the Benefits system, which is very different.